The Trailblazing Path of Ruth Freeman

It has been eighty-five years since Ruth and William Freeman added architect John French to their growing architectural practice, and our firm has borne their names ever since. And while our company name is familiar to many, our history is less so.

Yet thanks to two recent articles, we now know a lot more about one of our founders, the pioneering architect Ruth Freeman. Born Ruth Millicent Reynolds in the rural hamlet of Brainardsville, New York, she found her way to Cornell University after graduating from high school. She excelled at Cornell, where she became only the eighth woman to earn a degree from the School of Architecture in 1936. It was at Cornell where she met her husband, William Freeman. After graduating second in her class, she and William settled in Burlington and started what would eventually become Vermont’s longest operating architecture firm.

Ruth’s story is special not because she was a female architect in a male dominated field–impressive as that is–but because she thoroughly excelled at the practice of architecture.  Ruth was the lead designer at the firm, and gained national attention for her work on numerous occasions. She had one of her designs appear in Your Solar House, an important book by Simon & Shuster, in 1947; was featured as one of ten female architects in the Architectural Record of 1948; was the first woman to lead any state chapter of the American Institute of Architects; and held many leadership roles in the Vermont architecture community over her 30+ year career.

More than anything, however, Ruth was known for bringing modernism to Vermont. The central altar of Saint Mark’s Catholic Church (1942), the clean lines of the Synagogue Ohavi Zedek (1952), and the green and black glass of the Burlington Savings and Loan Building (1958) were all radical experiments in building materials, technologies, and forms previously unseen in Vermont.

Ruth went on to design dozens of other important buildings at Saint Michael’s College, the University of Vermont, and elsewhere around the state. She consulted the firm on new designs until her death from breast cancer in 1969. Over fifty years later, her influence can still be seen both in the buildings she designed and the generations of Vermont architects she mentored.

Further Reading:

Modernism in Vermont: The Architecture of Ruth Reynolds Freeman by Devin Colman, Archipedia

Vermont’s First Female Architect, Ruth Freeman by Amy Lilly, Seven Days

Over 80 Years of Innovation, Major milestones in our firm’s history